Washington Times Ends Rand Paul Column After Evidence of Plagiarism

It’s been a tough week for Rand Paul. The Kentucky Senator has faced a growing wave of accusations of plagiarism in his speeches and writings. The instances of plagiarism started with the somewhat absurd with Rachel Maddow calling Paul out on giving a speech with lines swiped from the Gattaca movie Wikipedia page, but throughout the week more new accusations began to pile up. The most serious (so far) being the almost verbatim, unattributed reuse of a The Week essay in Paul's weekly Washington Times op-ed. (You can see the offending paragraphs here.)

On Tuesday, the Washington Times said after an independent review of Paul’s work, the two were parting ways. “The newspaper and the senator mutually agreed to end his weekly column, which has appeared on each Friday in the newspaper since the summer,” a story in the Washington Times said.

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Washington Times editor John Solomon had this to say about Paul’s work for the paper:

“We expect our columnists to submit original work and to properly attribute material, and we appreciate that the senator and his staff have taken responsibility for an oversight in one column.”

“We also appreciate the original insights he has shared with our readers over the last few months and look forward to future contributions from Sen. Paul and any other members of Congress who take the time to help educate our readers with original thought leadership pieces.”